It is with much regret we report the death of Ray Stiles, dear husband to Molly our first and founding National Co-ordinator. Molly proved a dynamic, astute champion of the small school cause and we have thought of her often during this 30th. anniversary year which has now ended so sadly for her. We send her our condolences and our warmest wishes.

Whenever we think of what Molly achieved for us, those who know her will know the strength behind her efforts that was Ray. He wrote articles and pamphlets, edited the newsletter and was virtually Personal Assistant to all the activities she undertook on our behalf. He was her right hand at conferences and always encouraging initiative, a real champion for small schools.

Because of the problems over Christmas and New Year we had very short notice of the funeral and were very grateful that our member in Norfolk, Mike Slipper, was able personally to represent NASS’ He had wanted to attend anyway because of his own deep background in Norfolk education.

NASS owes so much to Ray and Molly. We have had a letter of appreciation from Stuart Sexton, another surviving Founder-Member and committed supporter. The warm tone of affection in those who have contacted us records their enduring impression of Ray as patient, polite, dedicated and, perhaps an old-fashioned word but in our experience very true, a gentleman.

The family mentioned a possible event in the near future to celebrate Ray's life and work and NASS looks forward to sharing such an occasion.

NASS is the only organisation pledged to do that and active in pursuing it. We have just celebrated our 30th. anniversary with one of the most active and effective years in our history. Please now add your support and appreciation.

We have submitted evidence orally and in writing to the Welsh Assembly Rural Development Inquiry, to the Assembly's Conservative Education spokesperson, to its Enterprise and Learning Committee and with a formal written submission to the Assembly Government's current consultation on School Organisation. We start the New Year with a presentation to Gwynedd's new Council as it examines options, the former Council having lost power in May after proposing widespread small school closures, and we are meeting ESTYN, the Welsh Inspectorate the same week in Cardiff. Wales is set to become a battleground in 2009 in our judgement and we very much need to be available if needed. So often the small case suffers from ignorance and prejudice and NASS tries to reach those who at least start with an open mind.

We gave written and oral evidence to Jim Rose's inquiry for the Government into primary education and to the f40 group of lowest-funded Local Authorities. We have submitted written evidence to the Scottish Parliament as it prepares guidance on maintaining rural schools, to Welsh and English Liberal Democrats preparing election manifestos and to Shropshire’s independent commission reviewing its withdrawn closure programme, with again a January commitment to give oral evidence to that Kinghan Inquiry. We have addressed packed meetings in Shrewsbury and the Isle of Wight to help energise and inspire local campaigns now proceeding vigorously against closure campaigns. We remain actively supporting one school now definitely earmarked for closure.

A year ago we launched a national media campaign exposing the threat of widespread closures across England and Wales and the new threat of stealth closures via governors of federated schools. Governors have just successfully closed two of the three schools in a Carmarthenshire Federation precisely as we predict, namely when the Local Authority squeezes budgets. We are wary of Somerset's motives in having forced its smaller schools into federations, at times unwanted, but do those who initially welcomed the seemingly generous proposal realise the slower route to site closures thereby opened? Governors do not close an entire school in that way and so are not bound by the new rather tough guidance Councils must follow and insistence on which we are pushing to the point of reference by NASS and local campaigners to the Local Government Ombudsman.

In September we held a very successful national conference, our first for several years, and arranged the 2008 House of Commons Small Schools seminar, featuring three of the country's most effective schools and talented leaders, all NASS members and attracting the best attendance so far. We have continued to up-date our now telling booklet of facts. We need more Small Schools as part of our pressure to see the benefits of small schools offered in urban areas. As size of school rises up the political agenda, albeit focused first, as ever, on secondary schooling (where the problems show but whose causes begin far earlier) our long-running campaign for 'Small Schools in the City' will have ever greater resonance. We continue to place and advise on media stories positive to small schools.

NASS began life campaigning against a spate of closures in Staffordshire and at a time when neighbouring Cheshire was promoting area schools based on closing up to seven small rural schools. These tired old attitudes are being revived under Government inducements for building and renovating schools despite four major surveys showing that beyond a minimum standard of ventilation, noise and working space the quality of school and college buildings has little impact on pupil performance. LEA reliance on narrow single factor unit cost arguments are similarly undone by more sophisticated analysis that shows small schools long-term are profitable and return revenue to the Exchequer.

At events like NCSL's regional small schools conference in Cumbria NASS proclaims the virtues of small schools as consistently revealed in research studies and test and inspection outcomes. We provide professional advice on aspects of the life and work of small schools. NASS argues the strength, in informed professional hands, of small peer groups, mixed age and ability teaching and a family model of learning. These are cited as disadvantageous in many closure proposals.

NASS is the only organisation that, through campaigns to keep small schools open, actively argues and promotes the small school, and smallness of scale in larger contexts, as the most natural and desirable form of effective education. NASS is the only organisation openly encouraging and striving to develop partnership between small schools and their local communities, in town or country alike. We argue the vitality of schools as central to community life in the village or the urban housing estate and central to the resolution of many urgent issues in society as a whole.

All this takes time, which your Committee freely gives, but also needs money. So we really do need your support. We need you to renew promptly. We need you to publicise our work and help recruit new members. We need you to value that small annual sum as, without LEA support, we cannot offer free or very cheap membership. We need you to make an investment in our work and to stay with us even if the threat that brought you to us passes, often with our help.

NASS exists on subscriptions and donations alone

Please join or renew via JEFFERSONS BUSINESS CENTRE in BANBURY. As last year the form includes space for you to suggest contacts we can perhaps interest in supporting us. Please do help us recruit more widely.

DONATIONS also always welcome

By Jeremy Rowe, head of The Lyceum School under the streets of Moorgate in the heart of the City of London.

Some years ago I was head of a very large urban primary school. I had about 450 children on role, and a total staff of about 60, including not only teachers and classroom assistants, but also dinner ladies, kitchen staff and all kinds of other adults. The school was characterised by a wide range of social problems, a wide range of pupil achievement, and a wide range of adult skills. We provided a more than adequate experience for the children, and passed successfully our OFSTED inspection.

I was, however, very conscious of the problems of being such a large school. There were virtually no economies of scale - rather we were bogged down in myriad challenges, most never arising in a small school.

This led me to some speculation. What if the 450 children were dispersed into 10 small urban schools? Each school would have an early years/infant class and a junior class, each of about 22 pupils. Each school would have a couple of teachers, a classroom assistant, a cook/dinner lady, and others, giving a staffing of 5 or 6 adults. In terms of personnel, the federation of 10 small schools would not cost any more than the huge salaries bill generated by the big school - always by far the biggest school budget cost.

Readers will see where this train of thought is leading. The ten small schools would be distributed evenly throughout the big school's catchment area, giving an approximation of the 'one small school for every street' concept. In small units, the children would have all the benefits of small school education. Many issues, such as bullying, would just fade away.

The generous staffing ratio in each small school would allow for highly individualised learning programmes; every child's needs would be met, and the small schools would develop work ethics for their children which are pipe dreams in the large school environments.

There is a vital proviso: the quality and skills of all the teachers must be extremely high. There could be nothing worse than a group of 45 children incarcerated with a poor or lazy teacher for all their primary years. Small schools are almost always characterised by the high quality of their teaching and similar calibre staff will be needed if small urban schools are to thrive.

Premises would not be an issue. An average house would provide sufficient teaching space for 45 children, and conversion of existing property could be achieved from the sale and redevelopment of present primary school premises. The gigantic Victorian buildings of a bygone era, built to service a very different society from today, can be converted into chi-chi loft apartments. No-one building even a large school today, would ever come up with the triple- or even quadruple-decker designs which characterise the modern urban scene.

The 'small is beautiful' advantages are well-documented. A small urban school, just like its rural counter-part, would have far less staff absenteeism, with a more loyal and committed staff. The issues of recruitment and retention, which blight so many inner-city schools, would be a thing of the past.

With the greater stability and family atmosphere of a small school, children will be happier and more settled than they are at present in large inner-city schools. They will thus become higher achievers. My small urban school has no entrance test and is truly mixed-ability. Our results, however, are impressive - and people often assume that to create such high-achievers, we must at some stage be selective. This is absolutely not true; and what we do within a mixed-ability small school is replicated in many rural situations and could be replicated in the urban context.

The concept of small urban schools is a radical one, and would require an extraordinary re-think of the status quo. To think of scrapping all the huge Victorian monoliths, and their twentieth century counterparts is revolutionary, but it is a way forward towards high achievements and well-rounded citizens far beyond the imagination of the current mind-set.

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In thanking Jeremy for a welcome contribution we would remind members that his present school is one he and a colleague, similarly disillusioned with the conventional local model, started themselves. They simply felt unable to give the children the benefit of their rich professional insights and experience as daily life was so consumed by administration. It was not easy but Jeremy has a lot of valuable experience now and is always ready to share this with anyone interested. NASS is keen to see the concept of the small school in the city discussed. In our September edition we reported the interest in Bristol and the University in the urban village concept at secondary level but there is nowhere a young child more needs small-scale, human-scale education than when starting out on the big education journey.

Professor Wetz, describing the Bristol Project spoke of a primary child, happy and successful there despite no interest or support from her parents (she had to get her breakfast and get herself to school every day) and who went to pieces early in her secondary schooling.

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Jeremy is especially proud of the recognition given by inspectors and others to the local studies work the children do. In a village it is very easy to step outside the classroom and use the local environment to understand and apply curriculum learning. Yet Jeremy believes his children are almost as much outside in his urban streets where of course there is as much stimulation for curriculum insights. Nor are places further afield ignored. On display earlier in 2008 were the amazing paintings undertaken after a successful visit to Monet's gardens at Giverny. The quality of the children's expressive skills, in language and in three-dimensional work, is of a very high standard. It expresses so well what everyone but administrators has long known, namely that effective education hangs indelibly upon leadership vision and energy. This is as possible in a large school of course but as Jeremy's experience clearly argues, so much more difficult even if you have those qualities anyway. In the small school, as one of the class teachers himself, Jeremy is able to express his talents so much more directly than from a distant office and several flights of stairs away. The concept of Heads free of class teaching duties is not so automatically beneficial as conventionally thought.

The US ERIC Clearing House on Rural Education and Small Schools observed in 2003 'We have yet to create the structures and policies necessary for small urban schools to thrive. We continue to bind them within old organisational structures shackle them with outmoded practices and restrict their success by imposing regulations designed for another time and place, and so denying them the supports they need most.'

NASS is committed to schools close to homes. It need not be expensive. We echo Jeremy in this respect. The urban village model is how Sweden organises its well-respected system of pre-schooling in its towns and cities.

OFSTED and ESTYN have noted that very large schools can succeed as very small schools do. It is almost certain that such schools inevitably have delegated or otherwise devolved arrangements to manage the larger scale. The Head of an early City Academy told the Press such schools were worthy and then described how just such delegation was one of the great secrets of his success.

This report presents the findings of a study consisting of 2 projects concerning primary to secondary transitions and the use of group work. There was some evidence that transition for pupils from rural and urban primary schools might not have the same impact upon previous learning and attainment. Those follow-up pupils from rural locations tended to do better after transition on the attainment tests than those from urban locations. In primary, rural pupils tended to have higher attainment scores and this was sustained in secondary on different measures. This is in contrast to the expectation that rural pupils will have greater difficulty adapting to secondary school.

Another reminder of our work reported in the autumn edition: NASS was represented at the above conference examining the financial factors behind grant inequities affecting rural authorities. Several LEAs are high on sparsity yet low in the tables of grant calculation. We fear a decision forced by financial pressure to support closures of small schools as too expensive and wanted to explain the broader economic perspectives we deem relevant.

Schools across Oxfordshire face transformation in the biggest-ever upheaval in the County's educational arrangements. Some primary schools, including some built in the 1950s, will be entirely demolished and re-built using moneys to which the Government will contribute £30 m. Some village schools will at last see temporary buildings replaced after years of complaints. Planned improvements will benefit Hornton Primary School, which, with Armathwaite, features in our booklet 'Two Small Schools', teasing out what makes small schools succeed. The book is still available to members free and for £5 to others.

The plans take account of recognised increases in population in the next few years, especially in Oxford. They also provide the greatest improvements for schools in the city's more deprived areas, of which it has several, despite the academic flavours always associated with Oxford. The alleviation of unsatisfactory learning conditions was argued in the County's bid for Buildings for the Future moneys and the Primary Capital Programme as one strategy designed to raise standards.

One urban school is to be completely re-built. This is the responsible way to address any surplus space as the new building will be designed for projected future numbers. We see it as an opportunity to design more flexible provision with smaller units, albeit it on the same site, but designed to create some local neighbourhood identity, worked as mini-schools under normal whole-school leadership but would the Council share that NASS vision of small schools in the city?

Press reports make no mention of overall rationalisation and reorganisation such as we regularly encounter in such exercises though local grapevine reports suggest federation is on some lips. Oxfordshire may well have set the more positive outlook we have hoped for. We nevertheless always advise vigilance.